]]>In the most extreme example yet of QR codes used as decor, the new Hotel Modez in Arnhem has a room covered entirely in scannable codes that link to "pornography, pin-ups and other piquancies".

The room, designed by fashion designer Antoine Peters, features bespoke wallpaper, curtains, bed linen and furniture entirely covered in the black-and-white symbols, which can be read by smartphones and other devices to reveal pornographic images, texts and movies.

"The room seems as abstract as it can be, but secretly you are surrounded by porn," says Peters. "The abstraction of the room symbolizes the fact piquancies are always extracted from the eye, but I think these just belong to hotel rooms. And anyway, aren't we surrounded by porn everywhere nowadays?

The room features pillows and fabrics created in collaboration with Daphne de Jong while Quinze & Milan produced square stools with a QR-codes laser-cut into their surfaces.

The QR-Code room was commissioned by creative studio Piet Paris, who invited 30 Dutch fashion designers, most of whom are based in Arnhem or are graduates of the city's Arnhem Art Academy, to each curate a room.

The hotel, which opened last week, is based in the city's Klarendal district, a once run-down area that is now an emerging fashion quarter.

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2012/09/20/qr-code-hotel-room-by-antoine-peters/feed/11Gift by Paul Cocksedge for Hotel Chocolathttps://www.dezeen.com/2012/09/18/gift-by-paul-cocksedge-for-hotel-chocolat/
https://www.dezeen.com/2012/09/18/gift-by-paul-cocksedge-for-hotel-chocolat/#commentsTue, 18 Sep 2012 11:00:58 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=246832London Design Festival: London designer Paul Cocksedge has made a giant chocolate QR code that visitors to The Dock during the London Design Festival can scan to get a free gift (or you could just scan the image in the bottom of this story). Cocksedge worked with Hotel Chocolat to create the installation as part of

Cocksedge worked with Hotel Chocolat to create the installation as part of Designs on Chocolate, a project pairing five designers with five chocolatiers. Following a visit to the company's factory, he decided to use nearly of their 1000 chocolates to make an interactive mosaic.

"I wanted to leave these beautiful pieces of chocolate as they were, instead of creating an object simply to be looked at, and so losing the whole idea of taste," Cocksedge says. "The true art of the chocolatier appeals to your palate as well as your eyes, and through the process of placing these exquisite pieces in various patterns, the project started to grow.”

Scanning the QR code on a smartphone or tablet leads visitors to the Hotel Chocolat website where they are rewarded with a voucher, to be exchanged at the company's flagship store in Covent Garden for a limited edition chocolate box that's been specially made for the London Design Festival's tenth anniversary.

"The idea is to create a pattern which is seemingly random but which, through the subtle introduction of technology, becomes something altogether new, the start of a journey," explains Cocksedge.

Designs on Chocolate will be on display at The Dock, Portobello Dock, 344 Ladbroke Grove, London, W10 5BU until 23 September. Photographs are by Mark Cocksedge.

Dezeen reader offer:

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If you're in London but can't make it to The Dock, Hotel Chocolat and Paul Cocksedge would like to share the experience with Dezeen readers, so you can scan the image above to claim your voucher.

While in Covent garden, pop into Dezeen Super Store at 38 Monmouth Street, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9EP where you can get 10% discount in store and enter our competition to win a designer watch worth £150 by downloading this flyer and presenting it at the shop.

Dezeen's London Design Festival map

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The map above is taken from Dezeen's guide to the London Design Festival, which lists all the events going on across the city this week. We'll be updating it over the coming days with extra information on our highlights so keep checking back. Explore the larger version of this map here.

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2012/09/18/gift-by-paul-cocksedge-for-hotel-chocolat/feed/1Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012https://www.dezeen.com/2012/08/29/russian-pavilion-at-venice-architeture-biennale-2012/
https://www.dezeen.com/2012/08/29/russian-pavilion-at-venice-architeture-biennale-2012/#commentsWed, 29 Aug 2012 07:30:50 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=240550Every surface inside the top floor of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is covered in QR codes, which visitors decode using tablet computers to explore ideas for a new Russian city dedicated to science. Downstairs, visitors can peer through lenses to catch a glimpse of the gated and secretive science towns established

]]>Every surface inside the top floor of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is covered in QR codes, which visitors decode using tablet computers to explore ideas for a new Russian city dedicated to science.

Downstairs, visitors can peer through lenses to catch a glimpse of the gated and secretive science towns established under the Soviet Union, intended to provide a contrast with the open and collaborative vision presented upstairs.

The Skolkovo science and technology centre will be located near Moscow by 2017 and bring together 500 companies working on IT, biomedical research, nuclear research, energy and space technology plus a university and homes.

In this part of the exhibition we show plans for a new city of science located near Moscow, in Russia. This project already involves some of the most important scientific centres in the world and will include a new university and homes for more than 500 firms working in distinct fields of science - IT, biomedical research, nuclear research, energy, and space technology.

Currently,these firms are situated in different parts of the world and interact with one another as a network. Our objective is to construct a city for this new community.

In our pavilion we have tried to find an architecture metaphor for connecting the real and the virtual. People today live at the intersection of on- and off-line; 'our common ground' is becoming a cipher for infinite mental spaces.

What will the city of the future look like, and, in particular, the city of science? The answer is to be found in the Skolkovo project. For the moment, these are plans; but their implementation should be competed in 2017.

The core of the architectural team for the project consists of Pierre de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima, Mohsen Mostafavi, Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, David Chipperfield, Yury Grigoryan, and Steano Boeri. The team is continually growing. We recently held our first competition to find additional architects for some apartment buildings. 600 architects took part in the competition, of whom 10 received commissions. Another three large competitions are to be held. Come and join in!

Duing the cold-war period from 1945 until 1989 more than 60 gated towns and cities were created in the Soviet Union for scientific and technological research. The existence of these cities was kept secret. They were everywhere in the country, and yet it was as if they did not exist.

The people who worked within were isolated from society and were sometimes, for the sake of secrecy, given new names and surnames. These cities and their inhabitants were invisible except to the watchful eyes of the secret service.

For the exhibition we named this secret country 'i-land'. It is the subject of the exhibition on the ground floor of the Russian Pavilion.

The new city - the Skolkovo innovation centre - is an instrument for transforming science after the end of the cold war. This is an open city which is being created by some of the world's most acknowledged architects, and we hoe to attract some of the world's advanced scientists. We called this city of the future 'i-city'. You will find it on the upper level.

]]>https://www.dezeen.com/2012/08/29/russian-pavilion-at-venice-architeture-biennale-2012/feed/7TeleTech call centre by MVRDVhttps://www.dezeen.com/2012/07/12/teletech-by-mvrdv/
https://www.dezeen.com/2012/07/12/teletech-by-mvrdv/#commentsThu, 12 Jul 2012 11:21:27 +0000http://admin.dezeen.com/?p=226939QR codes cover the exterior of this former mustard laboratory in Dijon that Dutch architects MVRDV have converted into a call centre (+ slideshow). A low budget prevented the architects from replacing the existing facade, so instead they covered it with panels that direct smartphones to the website of French company TeleTech. Stepped timber platforms covered

MVRDV has completed transformation of a disused Dijon Mustard laboratory (closed in 2009) into an innovative call centre with an education centre, incubator and social program. For MVRDV it represents an exemplary project: Transformation through reuse is one of the contemporary issues in European architecture since the current crisis. Completion of the 6500m2 refurbishment into a 600 work spaces call centre for operator Teletech has cost just 4 million Euro. The interventions possible on such a budget were directed towards quality enhancement with maximal maintenance of existing structure and services.

All over Europe buildings are vacant and waiting for a new future. Transformations are usually all about the preservation of historically or architecturally significant parts of a building. In this case the building was completed in 2004 and the preservation act directed towards reuse. The building is a former Unilever Amora Dijon mustard laboratory completed in 2004 and closed only five years later in 2009. The building was in a good state but due to its wide volume not suitable for traditional work spaces. The construction budget was too low to exchange the façade or make serious alterations to the structure. The budget makes literal reuse necessary and leads to less replacements and a better sustainable profile of the transformation act. A fine balance between intervention and intelligent re-use of the existing is the essence of the project.

Above: photograph is by the architects

MVRDV sees this transformation as an exemplary project for contemporary European architecture in times of the current crisis. How to reuse a building which is structurally in good shape but not suitable for a traditional transformation and use? The more reuse of the existing is possible the more budget is liberated for interventions. The unusual building evokes an unusual use and in the end will adjust perfectly to the Teletech work rhythm.

The Teletech call centre has rush hours in the morning, afternoon and early evening, only at these moments the building will be fully occupied by its workforce. For these short periods also unusual work places can be used which would not be suitable for eight hour shifts. The transformation strategy is adapted to this irregular use of the building. The inside is turned into a work landscape and the 600 young call centre operators will have flexible spaces: they can log in anywhere they want inside this work landscape. Different qualities such as silent, open or secluded places are offered. The way young people often work, with a laptop on the sofa or bed, was an inspiration for the interior design: the space needs to appeal to the operators to work the way they like, the space will be informally furnished with homely objects to provide a fun and creative working environment.

Above: photograph is by the architects

Outside the rush hours the call centre operators will have free time in which they can make use of the education centre, fitness centre, a gallery and projects incubator, also located inside the building. A big window, entresol spaces, skylights and a large atrium are used to create a community feeling and allow for daylight penetrating the 40 x 70 metres volume. As these interventions use up a large part of the budget other parts had to be designed as economically as possible. The façade for example could not be exchanged but is transformed with a simple print of a QR flashcode translated into the activities of the company; the façade acts as communicator and signals the transformation. The ground floor contains parking and cannot be inhabited as the building is located on a flood plain. In many cases the budget only allowed to remove or paint the existing elements. The result however is an exciting work space and radically contradicts the usual call centre which is often a series of tedious cubicles.

Teletech is a French service provider with call centres all over the world. In Dijon, Teletech International will experiment with this combination of call centre, education centre, leisure space and incubator to create and maintain jobs in France which are generally outsourced to developing countries. Despite the worldwide trend in this sector to reduce costs and constantly increase Taylorism, the company invests massively in its social policy along with this construction project. The ambition is directed towards reinventing and revolutionising existing procedures to improve customer brand relationships through a better qualified call centre agent. Teletech International believes that a qualitative work space is a part of the solution in creating a higher level of interaction with the consumers. The company will attract, teach and keep high level profile employees on site which can offer specialised and sophisticated services. The new building and the social program are an essential part of this innovative strategy.